Choosing a Species...

[jenlyn_b]

Melissa asked: How do you pick the sort of creature/being you utilize? For me, the "species" I use and the mythology of the powers in a given book have to fit in some way with whatever non-mystical concept I'm playing around with. Usually, I try to match up mystical and ordinary concepts that I think go well together. For my first book, which

Comments

[iagor]

I usually start with the paranormal aspect of the story and then decide what the everyday situation is like, because to me, that makes a lot more sense. If I'd just started with a character dealing with cliques, I could have gone in so many different directions- werewolf packs as the Mean Girls, a vampire as the outsider, faeries who just complicate the whole thing- but since I started with aura vision, I just had to think until I came up with one of any number of situations that I thought really worked in combination with the mythos I was using.

A very interesting post :) I enjoyed reading it. That seems like a very sensible way to ass plausability to a supernatural setting

[melissa_writing]

I like the tat thing (no surprise). My second novel, INK EXCHANGE, does a similar thing with the idea of traits conferred via ink. An tat artist I met has working on a book about a specific cultures tattoos carrying a curse/blessing. It's an intriguing thread to me. Since I'm rather fond of body mods, this makes good sense to me. . .and I can pretend my pursuit of ever more needles on my skin is research ;)